Derek, Jen, Brooke, Emily and...

 

As if there was ever any doubt...

 

 

A healthy perfect wonderful All American Girl!!! We're very excited to have another daughter on the way and the girls are very excited to have another sister too. Brooke wanted a brother but changed her tune pretty quick when she opened and read us the envelope. Here's a couple of pictures from the ultrasound today. The first one is her sort of reclining, the second is stretched out. She weighed 14 ounces and was in the 65th percentile for weight. 

 

We always wanted three kids, three girls actually, and now we know we'll have them. Of course Jen has decided she wants more kids, but I told her lets see how three goes. If having three is as great as having the first two though why not four...or five! But as happy as I am to have my girls, if we do have any more I'll be rooting hard to get some more BLUE in the house next time, me and the cat are getting seriously outnumbered! : ) But that's down the road, for now we're thrilled to have another healthy little girl on the way. Jen is feeling good and very excited about this news, so now it's on to names...any suggestions??

 

Winter Weekend In Acadia

 

 

This past weekend Greg, Steven, Ryan and I went up to Acadia to see what the place is like in the winter. We arrived 2 minutes shy of midnight Friday night and camped at the closed Blackwoods campground for free all weekend. We had the place pretty much to ourselves. I mean the whole place. The campground, the trails, the town. Not many people around this time of year, or at least not this weekend. Only a coule other campers in the usually packed full 300 site campground, I think we only saw 4 other hikers on the mountains and a few other diners in town. Lots of bare rock, mild temps near 40, some snow below treeline and ice here and there kept things interesting for the hike.

The weather wasn't great, but could have been much worse also. Mostly just overcast on the hike, then sleet and rain for a few hours followed by snow and wind overnight, but only a couple inches of the stuff. That was much better than the 10 they were calling for as we ate dinner in the ghost town of Bar Harbor. Geddy's was about the only thing open, but it had good food and a nice atmosphere as well as cold drinks. What more could you ask for? After dinner we each hauled a bundle of wood the 1/2 mile to our campsite from the road and had a great fire with a few more drinks as the wind and snow howled around us.

The next morning was very windy with a lot of blowing snow, so after a trip along the few miles of Ocean Drive that are actually open in winter (untreated and slippery with black ice, but open) we took route 1 to Brunswick and the speed reduced to 45mph I-95 home from there, with a stop at Famous Daves to break up the 7 hour drive and a visit to the Penobscot Narrows Bridge along the way too. All in all it was a great weekend. With better weather we would have hiked Sunday too but that wasn't meant to be. Just another reason to go back again sometime.

For now, to see pictures from this trip you can click right here. Since it was an entire wekend there's a lot of them, but if you've ever wondered like I have what the place is like in the winter, feel free to click your way through a winter trip to Acadia.

Nemo, College Woods & Agamenticus

 

 

 

 

I don't know when they started naming winter storms, or why they gave this one the name of a gimpy clown fish from a Disney movie, but Nemo the blizzard arrived Friday night and for once was all it was advertised to be. Lots of snow, high winds and cold temps made this the biggest storm I can ever remember. It was a good night to just sit in by a fire and drink some good wine, and that's exactly what we did as the winds howled and blew snow around outside. When it was all said and done we got about 18 - 24 inches here, although with drifts it goes from a dusting to 4 feet. We were lucky that it was a very dry fluffy snow, so the power stayed on and the shoveling was a bit easier. When it finally ended Saturday afternoon we shoveled, made snow castles, shoveled, went sledding, shoveled, had snowball fights and made the most of it. Brooke loved it and stayed outside for a long time with me. She was sledding, sliding, making snow angels, throwing snowballs and having a great time. Emily liked it for a little bit but was ready to go in after half an hour or so. I can't really blame her since in her snowsuit she can barely move. There's some pictures from the storm, just click here and it will take you to them.

 

I've also been out on a few more local hikes, one pre storm and one post storm. Nothing big but a nice walk in the College Woods Natural Area over in Durham, where the trails wander around along the banks of the Oyster River and through some groves of huge old trees. For a few pictures from that trip you can click here or on the pictures below.

 

The other little trip I went on was Sunday morning, the day after the storm, up to Agamenticus in York early in the morning to snowshoe up and watch the sunrise. After a 6am start to the hike and watching the sun come up from the main summit (First Hill) at 6:45 I broke trail out to Second Hill which is the middle of the three summits/hills of Agamenticus and then looped back around the side of the mountain to my car. The whole trip was only 3.5 miles but in 32" of fresh powder it turned out to be a pretty good workout. It was a great way to spend the morning and get out to enjoy the snow Nemo left us. There's a few more pictures from that trip here if you're interested.

 

Tomorrow my father goes in for his long overdue hip replacement. Hopefully all goes great there and he should be back on his feet in no time and better than he's been in a long time. Jen and the baby are still doing well, we can find out what it is a week from Wednesday if we want to, the girls are getting over their latest colds and everything else is pretty good too. Hope all is well with everyone else, enjoy the pictures and check back soon for more.

January 2013

 

 

January has come and gone. I thought I'd get the blog updated more often but with the chilly weather we haven't been up to much in the last few weeks. We've all been taking turns fighting and passing around a cold so that has limited us quite a bit as far as going places and doing things. Emily did turn two on the 28th and we had a fun little Minnie Mouse party for her that she was very excited about. We got her tickets to Disney On Ice for a present and we all went to that yesterday. Brooke had an art show at her school that Jen and I went to, Jen and the new baby are healthy and doing well. We can find out the 20th what he/she is, and I have been off on a few little hikes around Pawtuckaway and Great Bay and my father's having his hip replaced a week from tomorrow if all stays on schedule.

The biggest and saddest news however if you don't know is that Nana Nana (Jen's fathers mother) passed away on the 27th after a 6th battle with cancer at 83 years old. I asked Jen if she wanted to write something here but she declined so I will just say she was a special person, a wonderful great-grandmother to our girls and I feel very lucky to have gotten to know her so well over the past 12 years. I can't remember her ever beeing anything but loving, thoughtful, caring, friendly and most of all funny. She raised a great family that we got to see most of last week, which is always nice even under crummy circumstance, and I'm proud to be part of it. I know my own family wouldn't exist without her and the one she raised and I can't thank her for that enough for that. I put together a slideshow for the services with pictures of Nana Nana, and you can check them out here if you'd like.

That said, there are a few more pictures from the past couple weeks to look at. Not many, just a few of the girls, Emmy's party and some from the hikes. Emily seems to be coming down with another cold today, hopefully it doesn't get bad or last too long and we'll be out and about again as usual very soon. Until then check out what we have for now here, and I'll try and get more up soon.