Catching Up - Christmas 2008

They canceled church today because of the snow, so I have a chance to get caught up on my blog postings.

We had a nice Christmas holiday. Here are some pictures of everyone on Christmas morning. Lisa was here for the holiday, and Tiffany and Dan came over for presents. Nyssa supervised it all from her position on one of her favorite quilts. Later in the day we had dinner with Rob and Sadie and their kids, and Ray and Adrienne were here too, but I forgot my camera.

Here's a shot of the tree skirt that I made for Tiffany and Dan:



We did our traditional puzzle assembly - or should I say Lisa did and I helped! She is a total genius at putting puzzles together. I always leave the hard parts to her.





Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone!

Let it snow... NOT!

Friday, 12-18 and Sunday 12-20 we have had huge winter storms. Friday we got around 12 inches, and today we have another 12 or so. We had a break on Saturday - the roads were clear enough to go to the store, but then we got hammered again on Sunday.

Here is a picture of the snow on our back deck, looking towards the driveway and the car. I love how the snow stacks up on the railing.
We swept the car off this morning to go to church, so it doesn't look too bad. But notice the snow stacked up against the fence. When we run the snow blower, the only place to put the snow is against the fence along the house. We've had trouble with the fence blowing over in the wind lately, but I think with all the snow, it's going to be pretty stable this winter.
	Our pine tree in the back yard is covered - it's so pretty, as long as you don't have to go outside!
	We keep the BBQ grill on the back deck. Here's a shot of how the snow builds up on it. Guess I won't be doing any grilling for a while.

We had a wonderful Christmas program this morning. It might be that we had to sacrifice a bit to get there today, as the roads were very bad, but there was a sweet spirit there. We had lots of wonderful music and a couple of especially thought-provoking speakers.

Christmas Concert

December 12th and 13th were the annual Christmas concerts with the Melrose Symphony Orchestra. Here is a picture of me ready to go to the Saturday concert. These concerts are a mixture of classical and pops music, along with a wonderful soloist and a hand bell choir.



Robert is all decked out to go to the ward party in his snazzy Christmas tie.



After the concert we finally had time to get our tree decorated.

Thanksgiving 2008

I'm finally getting around to posting our pictures from Thanksgiving. We spent Thanksgiving with Dan, Karen, Jared and Sean, in Hamilton, NY.

Hamilton is about a 5 hour drive from Boston. We were going to leave around 10 on Wednesday, but we actually didn't hit the road until 12:30. We had heavy traffic until Sturbrige, along 95, but then from Sturbridge on it wasn't bad. We left Utica in the dark and had to navigate the back roads to Hamilton in the dark. The roads are a combination of rolling hills and curves, which made driving exciting.

This is the dinning room table all set and ready for diinner

We served up the food in the kitchen. We had traditional turkey, potatoes, stuffing, gravy and lots of other good things to eat.

Dan's friends had given them a huge blue hubbard squash. Sean and Dan broke it apart by throwing it on the ground, and then we scooped out the seeds and cooked the flesh. Here's a picture of Sean getting the seeds ready for toasting.

Here's a picture of Dan, Karen and Jared.

Jared is three years old and lots of fun. His favorite toys are cars and trucks, and his favorite movie is "Cars." Uncle Sean was a great hit because he has a movie preview on his BlackBerry of a car racing movie, which he let Jared watch to his heart's content.

Jared is playing with Uncle Sean's phone, while Dan and Sean pose for the camera.

This is a shot of Dan and Karen's front door. They live in a duplex that is an old house in Hamilton, with a deep back yard.

This house is located across the street. I fell in love with it - notice the beautiful stone work.

Dan and Karen have a flower arrangement on their piano, which looks like it is growing out of the back of my head in this picture. I haven't taken to wearing hats or feathers yet.

We are especially thankful for all of our family and friends at this time of year. We hope you all had a happy Thanksgiving.

Texas Trip

On November 11th Robert and I drove to Manchester, NH. I got on a plane for Austin for business and he got on a plane for Houston to visit Amy and David.

After spending a couple of days in Austin, I drove to Houston on Friday to pick up Robert. Robert had spent some time with Amy, Drew, Hannah and David in Houston, and we went out to lunch with them.

We ate lunch outside in the sun under the shade of a 400 year old tree. It was dropping acorns, leaves and little green jumping spiders that really liked Amy.

We then drove to Beaumont to spend some time with my brother and his family. It's about an hour and a half to Beaumont. On the way there we crossed the Houston Ship Channel on a bridge that goes up around 175 feet over the channel. It was pretty nerve-wracking - like riding up and down a roller-coaster. Here's a picture of the bridge

Here are some shots of Bruce, Lorraine and Benjamin (who came home from Nagadoches for the weekend).

Friday night we ate pizza and played a really fun game called Blokus. We were all still speaking to each other after it was over, which was an accomplishment!

On Saturday we went to Gator Country. It was cool and breezy, so the gators weren't too active, but we got some great pictures.

We went on a tour to get all educated about gators. The picture above is the guide holding a 3-year old gator. She has a broken jaw - look closely at the picture - the front of her snout is always open. She couldn't survive in the wild, because she couldn't snap and grab food.

Our favorite part of the tour was seeing Big Al. He is one of the largest gators in captivity. He was sunning himself on the bank, and because it was cold, the guide was able to get in the pen and give him a kiss on the snout.


We also saw some large snapping turtles. These turtles live on the bottom and rarely move. The guide opened its mouth to show the little pink lure that looks like a worm to fish. The fish come to investigate and the turtle snaps them into its mouth. Turns out that the turtle's neck can extend 1 1/2 to 2 feet out to grab food.

Lorraine and I hit the Fabric Shop in the afternoon while Bug went with Bruce and Robert to look for a new car. His old car got totaled in a close encounter with a tree, so he's in the market for something new to drive. I found some nice fabrics for a quilt that I'm planning, and we got to preview several of the test drive cars that Bug was thinking about. I purchased the fabric, but Bug didn't purchase a car that day.

While we were in Beaumont we got to tour Uncle Bruce's wood shop. He is working on Christmas presents for their grandkids and helping some of Lorraine's Webelos scouts with their Space Derby rockets. It was fun to see all his tools and to see Grandpa's work table that used to be in the basement on Louise Ave. It was also fun to see Grandma's old piano that I practiced on for many years.

We also went to a genuine Texas BBQ to have dinner on Monday night. The food was great and the ambience terrific. Driving from Austin to Houston I saw signs for BBQ's advertising "chop beef". I got to have some - it's basically beef that is grilled first and then chopped or shredded and served in BBQ sauce.

Tuesday morning we went back to Houston. I caught a plane back to Manchester, but Robert caught one for Oakland to go visit his dad. He also stopped in to see Aunt Verlene and had a nice visit with her.

Getting Organized

I've been working on getting my office space more tidy and organized. I bought a 2-drawer file cabinent at the office supply store the other day, and found this nifty organizer.



It has up to 12 adjustable slots, but I kept one slot big for the tape and pencil sharpener. All of the miscellaneous stuff that has cluttered my desk is now nicely organized!

Now if I could just find a way to hide the cable clutter!

New England Fall Colors

Gee, here it is the 2nd of November. Where did October go? I've been taking pictures of the fall colors during the whole month, so I guess it's time to post them. They run from early in the season to around the 20th of October.




These three pictures are on the shores of Silver Lake in Wilmington. I bike by here a lot.





These shots are early in the season. The reds have been especially vivid this year. This forest is near the field owned by the 495th Radio-Controlled Flght Squadron near Andover, MA.








These 4 shots are in and around Billerica, Tewksbury and Wilmington.




I have a window seat at work. This is the view from my window looking out towards the neighboring cemetery. I love the combination of the yellow trees with the red bushes, and the backdrop of the trees surrounding the cemetery. The picture doesn't do it justice because I'm shooting through my window, but it's a great view. I saw a wild turkey run across the parking lot today.