Ah, vacation....

A day at home doing 500 loads of laundry / grocery shopping / generally trying to forget I had to head back to work today. Then a day back at work, and here I am. The trip....it was a great time. We swam, we worked on a 1,000 piece puzzle (without much success until Holly came along). We read, we read to the kids. We played many games of Uno (mostly, Ella beat us). We had a Summer Solstice party. We had fires in the fireplace and on the beach, where many s'mores were consumed. We made margaritas and gin and tonics. We talked and talked, and we sat and watched the fire. And we laughed. All good.

Tuesday afternoon















Wednesday






Thursday





















I sadly have nothing after Thursday evening....since I made a crucial error when deleting old picture files off the memory card. Um, yeah. I didn't delete them, and ran out of space. Call it my Homer moment: I am so smart! S-M-R-T! So there are no pictures just yet of Old Macdonald's Farm (Charlotte: "No, goats! No lick my mama! Shoo!") or our trip to the ice cream trolley. Fortunately, there's the film the Peter-man shot.

And of course, a huge huge thank you to Pete and Holly, who watched the small Nasons so that the big Nasons could go out for dinner and drinks Friday night. Nothing like sipping a cosmo on the terrace under the trees.

I did not want to leave....I especially did not want to leave once Molly started calling, "Bye Charlotte! I love you!" and crying. Of course, the crying could have been because she was told to keep her fingers away from the car door, but still. On the way home, Charlotte asked, "Are we going back to the lake now?"

The Great Escape

We are back from Sackets. Such a good vacation- sand, sun, swims in the pool and walks on the beach. We also had a few big thunderstorms and lots and lots of wind. I'll write more a little later, but here are a few pics for now.

On fire (for me, anyway)

A sudden rash of finished-object productivity. The pattern was free (love knitty.com), Lou picked the colors, and it really was pretty easy. Despite my hatred of seaming, the seams are beauteous, if I do say so myself. You'll just have to take my word for it.

The first time I showed it to her, she flat out refused to try it on. Okay, so the seaming wasn't done. I tried again once it was complete. She obliged, with the I'm-humoring-you-Mama vibe, then screeched at me to "get it off me!" Will you wear it another time? I asked. "No, I doesn't."

She seemed to like it a bit better when she saw it in the pile of things to be packed. "That's MINE."








We shall see. I might be making more of them, possibly in larger sizes. I might be working on one right now.

The Forest

Last Sunday, I showed the girls that if you go in under the two spruce trees at the end of the driveway, the space between the two trunks becomes a little fort. They were pretty excited to discover the "forest" and the bounty of cones it yielded.







Since the Alberta spruce is very young still (and therefore kid-size), it doesn't grow its own cones yet. Naturally, it needs donated cones.




And before my camera batteries went dead, I caught one picture of Miss Molly Moo with bubbles. Man, that girl is fast!

Pleased with myself

I made some little sweaters for my friend Amy's baby, who is coming around mid-July, and whose gender is as yet unknown. I am just so proud of how well they came out.


They close with little ribbon ties:


Detail around the neckline (made by increasing the number of stitches):


And a tiny sleeve cuff!


I am generally not very good with project timetables. It's why I now start things way in advance of when I need them to be done or make things a size up from where I will need them to be (Charlotte's sweaters). Sometimes that works well...sometimes not so much. I still have not completed a baby gift for a friend's child who was born last October...and I started it in the one year size.

I wonder about this inability to complete projects. It's not just the knitting; there's house projects and yard projects as well. It's partly that I get distracted by other things, or that sometimes my life moves too fast. That's a goal for me this summer. I need to slow down and just appreciate the time I have to do the things I enjoy with the people I love, and not be running around like a maniac trying to do as much as possible in the minimal time off we tend to get from work in the summer.

One of the women I work with has parents who emigrated from Greece before she was born. She was raised in the US but has spent tons of time in Greece, including going to high school there. She says that in Greece, a person gets a month off each year, and most people take the time all at once and in the summer. Doesn't that sound amazing? What would I do with a whole summer off? Food for thought.

I am so looking forward to vacation! Not much longer....

And for those who are thinking, "Less jibber-jabber. More pictures of the Lou,"

Weekend in the woods

Finally posting about our camping/wheeling weekend. We had such a good time! Washington NH is more or less in the middle of nowhere. There's really no large town that it's near, although the birthplace of President Franklin Pierce is one or two towns over. Really, that's the claim to fame. There are huge signs and everything.

Mostly, it's just beautiful green wooded land and farms. It would be so cool to live out there, but where would you work? We could retire there, but I expect by the time I am old and rickety the last thing I'll want to do is tear around back roads in the snow all winter or take care of ornery goats and fight off black flies all summer.

Our camp


Have homebrew, will travel


Saturday morning, more people arrive

On the trail: the view from the passenger seat



More of my view. A bog (we were on Bog Road, oddly enough), and mud on the inside.


Apparently the Class VI roads used to be main drags at one point in time. They're bordered by stone walls on each side, 25 feet apart. Also, there are blackberry bushes everywhere.


Carter Hill Road. This was probably the most challenging part of the ride for those who drove. The picture does not do it justice- there are BIG rocks everywhere. Very tricky.

Coming up the hill. We were second in the line and got up the hill without much difficulty (go Pete!), so I took lots of shots of everyone else. Pete and some friends guiding others up, the biggest pickup truck ever, our friend Aaron.



Getting unstuck (Pete in orange shirt), it's coming right for us!



I found that, a lot of the time, the camera did not keep up with me in terms of how quickly I wanted to take pictures. Still, not too bad. Practice, practice.

We headed home Saturday night once the second thunderstorm started. Camping is less fun without a fire, and the lure of showers and our own cozy bed was just too great to stick out the second night in the tent. Nothing like a warm shower and bed when you're wet, muddy and covered with bug spray.

The Lou had lots of fun with Aunt Beth, Uncle Steve and the girls. Another huge thank you to the North Berwick Nasons (especially Beth) for taking good care of our girl!

It's good to be home again, planning our next adventure. I have to say that it was very cool getting to see Pete in action: helping organize the event, assisting others in last-minute Jeep fixes and with getting through the sticky parts of the trail ride. He even planned out yummy camping meals for us. Just another reminder that my husband is a true Renaissance man and a very cool guy.