Snowshoeing

There is a wooded area next door to Mom's office building in Pittsfield, and Mom has made a habit of taking lunchtime walks there a couple of times each week. Since the snow arrived it has been too deep to walk in, so today Mom brought her snowshoes to work and gave that a try.

The path starts as a little hunter trail through the trees....

...and it opens up onto the Sebasticook River, with a nice view of this rickety suspension bridge....

....then eventually it runs into this old railroad grade, which is used by snowmobilers in the winter.

The snowmobile trail crosses the rickety bridge, but Mom doesn't trust it unless she sees fresh tracks.

It's obvious that the bridge has been here for awhile (note the tree growing around the tieback cables in the photo below), so it must be fairly sturdy.

Crossing the bridge would take you to Manson Park, but Mom usually goes the other way, which eventually dead-ends into the existing railroad tracks that run through town.

It's a very peaceful walk, especially with snow on the ground to dampen any noise from town. Today Mom saw a lot of animal tracks in the snow and these two ducks swimming in the river.

Here's a self-portrait taken from the bridge (Mom usually tries to wear some orange in the woods--it is still bowhunting season after all).

Mom is very lucky to be able to go snowshoeing right from work! It's like a little nature therapy, right in the middle of the workday.

Package from Marilyn

Brenda's Aunt Marilyn sent the girls a package in the mail--we thought it was for Christmas but it was actually a Get Well package (from when Em was sick), so tonight we opened it up.

It had cards for the girls (which they love because they can read their own names on the envelopes now), and some little books to read.They insisted that we read them the cards, and then all the books right away.The kids just love to get packages in the mail. Thank you Aunt Marilyn!

Unfortunate Craft Project

Here's what we found after a few minutes of letting the girls play upstairs (in the playroom, next to the office) quietly by themselves:

Yes, it is a craft project made out of U.S. postage stamps. We can't blame the kids, because we never told them that these stamps are "special". We should have kept them out of sight--we'll chalk that up as a lesson learned for the moms!

Christmas Cookies!

Today we had planned a big trip to Santa's Village (in New Hampshire), but the weather looked ugly so we stayed home instead and made Christmas Cookies.

Mama made the dough, and Mom got out all the supplies. Emily remembered making cookies last year and she got pretty excited looking at all the decorations.

She couldn't wait to put on her apron and start making cookies!Grandma came over to help us with the cookies, and she and Mom rolled out the dough, but the girls used the cookie cutters all by themselves.They also did the decorations all by themselves, which was a good idea in theory.......but actually resulted in a lot of extra sugar consumption........and a lot of "overdoing" the sprinkles (notice Kate's generous use of the red sprinkles below).The cookie-making went very well, with lots of sugar cookies for Santa to eat when he makes his visit on Christmas Eve, and a few extra for us too!

And of course we had to test them out a little, to make sure Santa will like them.

They were delicious!

Nutcracker and Santa Surprise

Tonight was the big tap dance performance of the Nutcracker, put on by Alana and Lili's dance company in Augusta. It started at 4:00, so we figured we'd make it until the girls got hungry, then go out to dinner.

We sat with Nana and Grandpa Nichols. Uncle Seth, Aunt Sara, and Sebastian were there too!

The performance was great--it's amazing how the leaders can organize all those young dancers, re-choreograph it for tap, and still make it entertaining.Alana and Lili both did great. Lili was one of the mice in the mouse army (laying on the floor below)........and next to the tree in this photo.Alana got to ride a horse (okay, a stick horse) with her buddies. She is the tall one in the center of the photo below.At intermission the kids were starting to get restless, and since their cousins' parts in the performance were over, we figured we'd head out to dinner.We saw Uncle Seth on the way out--he was very proud of his daughters!On the way to the car we ran into Lili, still in her makeup........and Alana too!Not surprisingly, all that dancing energy made our kids want to dance too.When we left the performance we decided to take a chance and go to a fairly nice restaurant--Slates, in Hallowell. We were hoping that the girls would be on their best behavior.

The first surprise that happened was the fireworks--a big display right there in town! The kids love fireworks and thought they were wonderful. Despite the fireworks we still managed to find parking downtown, and we got seated right away.

Our next surprise happened while we were reading our menus....Santa showed up!

The kids were overwhelmed to see Santa in the restaurant, and frankly so were we (check out the lovely wall mural behind Kate, which somehow doesn't really fit in with that Christmasy spirit).Santa came right over to our table and asked the girls what they wanted for Christmas. Kate was speechless in his presence, but Emily immediately spoke up and ran down her whole list for him.After telling the girls to be good, and letting loose with a few hearty ho ho ho's, Santa took off. Then we had a lot of questions to answer: "Was that really Santa?" "Where are the reindeer?" "Isn't he busy?" etc. etc. etc.Emily kept replaying the moment...it was really a very sweet surprise for the kids.Yes, we are perpetuating a lie, but we think it's nice that our kids believe in Santa Claus, at least for a few more years.

Decking the Tree

Today we got into the Christmas spirit by putting together our tree and decorating it. This is the first year that either mom has had a fake tree inside (we used it for outside decoration last year), but it was nice not to have to venture out in the cold, chop it down, and worry about bugs or needle-shedding. It will also be nice to not have to keep watering it. The girls didn't care if it was real or fake, they were just happy to see it go up.

This is also the first year that both kids can actually help decorate. Kate's favorite seemed to be the silver ball ornaments (oooh, shiny!), maybe because she could see herself in them?Emily liked hanging up everything, probably because she was able to master the hangers this year. She was quite proud!Mama always hangs her own treasured items...this little apple is something from her childhood days.And Mom, of course, has her tools.The girls worked really hard on decorating, and when we were done there were quite a lot of ornaments right on the front, about at their eye level....we may have to do some evening out after they go to bed tonight.We're pretty happy with our Christmas tree this year!

Polar Bear Showdown

After our lovely dinner at Noah and Leo's house, Mom was invited to go to the Colby-Bowdoin Men's Hockey game with Arne (he is a professor at Colby and had two tickets). The two schools are arch-rivals in all sports, and Mom was thrilled to be going to the game!

They don't usually have to distribute tickets for these games, but this one is always packed.

Sure enough, the arena was jammed with fans. Apparently there have been some "rowdiness" issues in the past, so there were more than a few police officers attending as well.The game itself was great--the Bowdoin team (the "Polar Bears") was undefeated coming in and more talented, but Colby played very tough and actually led for the whole game. Emotions were high, so there were lots of penalties and even a few fights.The photo below shows the rare situation of THREE players from the same team serving simultaneous penalties....whoops.The score was close all the way to the end. We were sitting right behind the Colby bench, so we got to listen in on their timeout strategy. And here's the home team celebrating after another goal!We were caught up in the excitement, and doing our share of cheering too!The final was 4-2. Congratulations Colby!Mom had a great time at the game, and hopes to go to a lot more (and bring the kids too)!