Tag Archives: family

Thanksgiving 2015

On Wednesday I drove to Albany and picked up Barb and Joe while Kathryn cooked.  We ate our traditional Thanksgiving Eve dinner of pizza.  We ended up making an emergency trip to the RiteAid Pharmacy because Ateria didn’t send all the necessary medications.  Thursday morning Eric played pickup football in the Barneveld Turkey Bowl.  The basic strategy was to have everyone go long and throw the bomb.

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Kathryn made a Thanksgiving Dinner that couldn’t be beat.

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Easter Eggs and BubbleBots

We hosted Billie Jo, Joel, Stone and Dakota for Easter Dinner: ham, scalloped potatoes and banana creme pie. Prior to dinner I hide 60 eggs with an assortment of candy, coins and small toys within. Eric had asked that the egg hunt be more challenging this year, so I used the pine trees and orchard area to hide the Easter eggs.

Below the perimeter of the area is described and kids start looking. Eric and Stone race to the next hiding spot.

Eric counts his eggs (they had to stop when they each got 20 eggs). Stone finds a colorful yellow egg under a pear tree.

The kids pose with their buckets of eggs. Cullen poses just because.

After lunch Kathryn and the kids had a rousing game of Bubble-Bots.

Christmas Tree 2011

We picked up our Christmas tree on Friday afternoon. We picked up Eric after school and went to the cut-your-own place on Fox Road – our 1st time there. The owner was very organized and had nice trimmed trees.

I cut and Eric steadied the tree. We loaded it on the tarp and Eric dragged it out.

Because it has been so warm the tree had no snow or ice on it and we set the tree up in the house that afternoon where it stayed over the weekend.

Sunday afternoon Boucherons and Skellys joined us for a tree trimming party.

Billie Jo’s Wedding Shower

Saturday we hosted Billie Jo’s wedding shower which was organized by Barbara and Maureen. Pre-party activities included preparing food, blowing up balloons, and streaming crepe paper.

There was a variety of entertainment, including making TP dresses. Dakota, Bella and Kaylee got the treatment.

Billie Jo was surprised.

Wendy, Billie Jo and Maureen

 

 

Christmas

Friday morning Jennifer and Mike came over. They gave Eric a new WII game (Donkey Kong), and stayed for a couple hours to play with him.

We had a very good time at Billie Jo’s. The kids were wild. Dakota vomited within 10 minutes of us getting there. She was quite literally green. She did not act very chipper until a hour or so later. Stone had some 24 hour bug on Wednesday. We got to meet Joel’s family and seemingly didn’t catch anything from the kids.

Then, we got NO sleep Christmas eve. Eric just could not stay in bed. He fidgeted non-stop. We were quite grumpy about it all. But Christmas morning it was all forgotten.

Jack and Chris came over for Kathryn’s ham and scalloped potatoes dinner and stayed to play games with us. We got Clue and Cranium for Christmas so we had fun breaking those in.

Kathryn made pea soup and we got the house picked up. We managed to get the upstairs bedroom painted this week and furniture moved into it as a usable guest room.

Toddy Pond, Maine

We have been blessed with wonderful weather during our vacation. We went swimming every day – usually twice. We did jumping competitions from the dock; swam to a large nearby rock for sunning; and twice we took out the pontoon boat for tubing and swimming in the middle of the lake. We played Jump or Dive, Marco Polo and any other ad hoc water game we could think of.

Below Eric, Kathryn and Scout lounge on the large rock and then Scout, Kathryn and Eric swim in from the rock.

Below Pam relaxes in the tube while Eric prefers being thrown into the water.

Below Jim prepares to dunk Eric, who can be seen below the water in the next picture.

Kathryn and Jim Helmer ride the waves while tubing.

Kathryn picks blue berries. Jim and Eric enjoy fishing from the end of the dock at evening.

Scout, Kathryn, Jim and Eric around the evening fire. Kathryn and Pam on top of Blue Hill Mountain.

We had lots of native blueberries – in fact every other day 2-3 people would pick a bowl from the surrounding bushes for our breakfast cereal. We had a home cooked lobster meal one night, did take out lobster rolls one night, got invited to friends for chicken BBQ and ate at an ocean side restaurant last night to celebrate our 34th year anniversary.

We had a campfire for 3 nights. On Sunday or Monday night we saw a meteor shower with 8 meteors in a 10 minute span including one of the brightest single meteors I have ever seen.

In ‘down’ times we played lots of Sorry. We picked up a new board game called Scotland Yard and played that several times between swims as well.

We had one more quick swim before lunch on Saturday and then drove the 4-5 hours to stay in a motel 6 just NW of Boston and then completed our trip on Sunday morning. Somehow a single 9 hour drive isn’t that appealing.

Hunting Fossils in Trenton Gorge

We hiked into a nearby gorge hunting trilobites. It was a steep path down by the bridge. The bridge is hinged and was hauled in two sections and bolted together.

It was a short hike downstream.

Everyone got looking. Skip and Kathryn ponder the rocks.

Eric decided to try going behind the water fall. Kathryn checks a cliff.

Eric found a great specimen.

Billie Jo and Joel. Everyone is accounted for.

We hiked out and went tubing on the West Canada for the remainder of the day.

Keuka Lake

Tom & Debby were visiting from Seattle for the Skelly Family Reunion. Following the reunion they booked a camp on Keuka Lake and invited us to spend the week with them. It was hot and sunny with temperatures in the 90s every day. Sunday we went grocery shopping and swam. Sunday night we watched Flares Around the Lake and 90 minutes of fireworks. At times there were 12 simultaneous fireworks visible from our viewpoint on the dock.

Monday Kathryn, Eric and Debby went to Roseland Water Park. Tom and I went to the Glenn Curtiss Museum in Hammondsport. Tuesday we stayed home to swim and in the evening we drove to Victor to shop at LL Bean and met Pat and Janice for Dinner . Wednesday Kathryn, Tom and Debbie went on a Wine Tour while Eric and I swam and had water gun wars. Thursday we swam and fished. Friday we returned home.

When we weren’t in the water and spraying each other we had marathon Sorry games – below Eric and Debby do battle.