We met up with our friends Amy and Hilary for dinner at the local Thai restaurant...yum!
After dinner we went down the street to the Waterville Opera House to see the musical "Cabaret". Although the story line was a little dark, the performance was very impressive.
What a fun evening!
They pretended it was a velodrome and went around and around in circles.
Kate has definitely outgrown her scooter, and will be moving up to the trike next summer.
This got Emily thinking about her own next bike, and she proceeded to give a very lengthy, detailed explanation about the size, color, and importance of it. Somewhere, Santa was listening carefully.
When we got too cold we headed down to the basement to put together the new bike storage rack that arrived yesterday. The kids just love "helping" on projects like this, although it makes things go much slower.
Emily is surprisingly good at using a ratchet and socket, while Kate really likes to put screws in holes. They both like to whack things with the mallet, of course.
Unsurprisingly, at bedtime the rack was still not finished and several screws and an allen wrench were missing. I guess that's the price we pay for all of the semi-professional "help" from the kids.
Firefighter Farrington gave us the tour, and it was obvious that he has a lot of pride in his department.
He showed us a lot of cool stuff, including the dispatch center. While we were in there, several emergency calls came in, which was pretty exciting.
But the kids really wanted to see all the trucks and equipment. There's just something about a shiny fire truck with lockers full of gear that is fascinating to kids (okay, and adults too). 
Kate enjoyed the tour, and she even got to sit in a real fire truck!
Here she is sitting quietly between her BFF Julia and Phoebe, who rode along with us in our car.
The kids really payed attention when it was time for Firefighter Farrington to demonstrate all his turnout gear. All of his equipment together weighs over 80 pounds!
It was great to see all the kids sitting and listening quietly--something that doesn't happen much with a roomful of preschoolers.
The fire department field trip was definitely a hit!
The pour started at 8:00 sharp when the first concrete truck showed up on site. Unlike a typical concrete pour, the trucks were loaded with only water and cement but no coarse or fine aggregate (rock). This is because the heavyweight aggregate would cause the trucks to be too heavy to drive on the city streets.
Instead, the heavyweight aggregate was added on-site. A small crane was used to pick up the bags of rock and load them into this hopper, where a giant spike was waiting to rip them open. It worked great!
This guy's job was to make sure all the rock got into the hopper, and none spilled out the sides.
Then the mixer truck backed under the hopper and all the rock was dumped in, which resulted in a concrete mix of 5 cubic yards per truck (about 35,000 lb of material).
After mixing, the concrete was tested for air content, slump, and unit weight. Since this was the first pour, there were a lot of spectators from Mass Highway (the bridge owner) observing the tests. Everything looked good, so it was off to the pour site!
Each truck had to back carefully up a 1/4-mile long ramp and then discharge the concrete into the counterweight through this long chute. For a big pour like this, there were about ten workers needed at the counterweight--they lined up the truck, operated the chute, controlled the speed of the concrete coming out, and climbed down inside the counterweight to make sure the concrete got into every nook and cranny.
Mom's job through all of this was to monitor the unit weight of each truck, make sure there were no problems with the falsework (the hangers supporting everything), and show the crew exactly where the concrete needed to go inside the counterweight box.
There were 11 trucks, and the pour took about 5 hours. During breaks between trucks, Mom and her boss took the opportunity to climb around on the leaf and check some survey marks.
The drop to the water here is about 80 feet. It's a good thing Mom is not afraid of heights!
Finally the pour was completed and the concrete crew got to clean up and call it a day. Mom still had work to do though: She and her boss had to weigh the entire bridge by jacking it up with hydraulic rams and reading the pressure. This operation took about 2 hours.
By 5:00 Mom was ready to call it a day and start the 4-hour drive home!
....and the girls ran out to join her...
....because hauling brush is pretty fun....
....but only until you find a spot to play Queen of the Mountain!
Emily conquered the mountain first, of course...
...but she graciously let her little sister be Queen for awhile too.
Then we did some swinging...
...took a walk up in the woods....
...and finally threw the ball for Connor while we watched the sun set.
What a nice crisp fall evening!
Emily's preschool buddy Nicholas was also there with his mom, but at first Emily didn't recognize him because we were all bundled up so much from the cold.
There were lots of fun things to try, like pumpkin bowling....
...where you had to try to knock down the soda bottles at the end of this chute.
Kate's pumpkin didn't roll very far, but Mama got off a good one. Notice her foot kicked up on the follow-through (think she's very competitive?).
Kate thought she might like to try a pony ride, but when the pony was ready she chickened out and ran away.
There were some goats to pet and feed, but they were a little bit intimidating too.
Emily was worn out from our earlier pumpkin picking adventure and didn't really want to participate in the Harvest Fest, but that changed when she saw the hayride, pulled by a real John Deere!
Riding through the downtown streets of Waterville behind a tractor was the highlight of the Festival for the kids.
