Family trip

This year we collaborated with two of my brothers' families for a vacation to North Conway, New Hampshire. We invited Nana along, since she & Gramps used to take us there every year. We went to Storyland, Clark's Trading Post, and the girls shopped at Settler's Green.

Clark's Trading Post

Ethan in the ice cream parlor


Asa patiently waiting (!!!)


Ethan waiting for the trained bear show


On the way home, Asa clutches a partial McNugget in his sleep. Yes, we do feed that stuff to our kids occasionally. :P

Storyland

Ethan & Asa with Humpty


Ethan with uncles & cousins


On the twirling teacup ride

Toad

Ethan found a little toad in our yard. It made for fun picture taking. :)

Update

The morning after:

More washout! From April 16 northeaster

A bridge across town from us washed out--or rather is still washing out--from the rain. It has gotten worse since these pics were taken. That's my friend Micah in the foreground. He and his family live on the road past the washout.

April snow

 

New linked blogs

Check out Joyous and MissionsGear in my links list!

Layers

 

Clearing some snow

 

Ethan & his snowman

 

Washouts!

We got a bunch of snow and then it rained really hard all day. There were a ton of washouts all around the area due to the storm drains and culverts being clogged by snow from other prior storms. What a mess!

This is across the street from us. The damage blocks access to a private road where 7 families live:

This is the set of steps in front of our house. We went out to run an errand and this is what we found when we returned! The water was rushing across the road, hitting the snow bank, and traveling down the side of the road until it reached our driveway. Then it came barreling down the drive and over our steps. I took a shovel up the road and shoveled a big hole through the snow bank. That fixed most of the problem by routing the water across the street through the woods.

We had washouts at the top of our driveway 8-12" deep. Not too bad when we consider how much damage others had. We're very thankful.

Artists

Ethan & Asa

Asa, Ethan, & a large orange hat.

Snow storm

After a snow storm on 2/3

Ice fishing

Ethan's all bundled up to go ice fishing on a chilly day.

We have a really well-preserved stone wall that forms the east border of our property. You can see how big it is compared to Ethan. I can't imagine the manual labor of man and beast that went into forming such a thing. It's well over 200 yards long and is still square and standing most of the way.
 

Christmas eve treats

We usually worship on Sunday evenings, but today our church substituted an extended morning meeting for the evening meeting. So we stayed home and made treats.

Cutting the Christmas tree

We cut our Christmas tree almost a month ago, but I hadn't taken the time to post the pictures.



Hauling the tree out. The guy in the orange hat owns the tree farm.




Ah, the fun part.



More fun.


The tarp was a bad idea. Unnecessary & it made lots of noise. But we made it home alright.

If I die in my youth...

...I hope I leave a legacy this noble:
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