Those Cougars are naughty...

So says Grace and I believe her. She has been lucky to never have tasted the bitterness of defeat in the big game until this year and that was her response. "Urghhh, those Cougars are naughty." While two minutes after the game was over Grace was recovered and playing with her toys, Dad and Mom (especially Dad) were still brewing. How does the defense give up 3 tds including a drive of 90 yards and a 75 yard, 69 second drive to lose the game with all naughts on the clock? The prevent defense is how. The U. was unable to get any pressure on Beck for most of the game and it is like they gave up in the fourth quarter. It wasn't just the last drive, but it seemed that most of the fourth quarter they had given up pressuring Beck and only rushed 3. This gave Beck approximately an eternity to complete each pass and the result? BYU 33, Utah 31. The once feared U. defense would never have allowed this, even this year's D. should have stopped the last drive.

Now the U fans have to say wait until next year, but I still stand by my statement made 2 months ago. Neither BYU or Utah are any good this year. BYU may be ranked, but I know who the real BYU is and they aren't very good.

GO UTES!!! In defeat I just bleed even more crimson.

This one is for Jared

Well while I am in a blogging mood I better finally get this one done. I was suppose to do it 3 months ago when in Utah, but for some reason it never happened. I have promised Jared I would get to it and now I finally have.


One of the highlights of our vacation to Utah in August was the chance I had to go camping in the Uintas. The Uinta mountains are one of my favorite places. The desolation, the solitude, the communion that takes place is divine as I find myself in one of the last refuges from roads, cell phones, and the hustle and bustle of life.


Jared graciously invited me to go camping and we had a great time. We did a little geocaching, we fjord the river, we hiked, we played horse shoes, and we had a great time.


Jared posted about our trip a while ago and talked about his victory over me in horseshoes. All I can say is that Jared has some black magic voodoo curse on me. It started back in 7th grade during shasta day competitions. Coach Ranck at Bonneville would have basketball camp and once a week we would have Shasta Day where the winners of certain events would get a nice cool drink. One of the competitions involved one-on-one play. The guards would play against each other and the big men would play against each other. Then the winner of the guards and the winner of the big men would play each other for all the Shastas in the cooler. I can remember playing Jared at least twice in this competition and both times I lost. It wasn't his size on me, or his better basketball skills, it was the black magic voodoo curse that he was hexing me with. This has continued to this day whether it is a game of horse, fantansy sports, or horseshoes out camping. Jared has the magical ability to pull out a victory even when he looks desperate.

While I did lose to him 4 out of 4 while camping, I think that the curse is finally showing signs of weakening. I beat him in fantasy basketball a couple of weeks ago (the battle of the cellar dwellars) and I think he will be in trouble if we meet in the fantansy football playoffs. Horseshoes anyone?

The beautiful New England fall

Well after suffering through a miserable autumn last year, this year has lived up to the typical New England fall billing. The hurricane season has been practicall non-existent so we haven't had to deal with much rain and the weather has just been perfect for both fall colors and to still get outside and have some fun.


For the last 3 months, I have been in charge of Grace and Hattie on Saturday afternoons while Michelle has been busy working. It started out with Harriet crying and screaming for most of the time and trips half way through to get to the barn so that Michelle could feed Harriet while Grace and I just wished for some peace and quiet. Now Harriet no longer requires nourishment straight from the source (although still her favorite) and she is much more content with Dad and big sister Grace.

Her progression and the weather have really allowed us to have some fun over the last few Saturdays. We took our first bike trailer ride, we have raked and played in leaves, and we have just had fun without having to listen to the crys and screams of a 6-7 month old. All of this has added up to me now looking forward to Saturday afternoons with my girls. Yesterday we all got comfy and watched some football (should be read as, took a nice nap on the couch together). Grace and I used to do this all the time when she was Hattie's age. Grace even helps me fix things around the house and watched over Hattie while we get little projects done. I think she has gotten a Bob the Builder bug in her and she wants to use hammers and screwdrivers to build and fix things. Better than dolls, right?


Anyway, here is hoping to a mild winter and some outdoor fun. Oh and by the way, the leaves may be beautiful up on the trees, but the curse of New England autumns, the dirty little secret, the skeleton in the closet, is that those leaves fall off and must be raked. I have raked and raked and raked some more and it never ends. If I have to rake one more leaf this fall I might just go insane.

One step from the garage?

Michelle recently blogged about turning the den into a playroom and mentioned that I was also very happy about it as I now no longer have to stumble over trains in the living room. This is true; however, I am wondering how long the current configuration will last before the computer is banished to either the garage or the basement. Just in case I have been cleaning up and organizing the basement (since that is the only room I can claim for my own) for that possibility. For the moment I can't complain about my new digs. I have a nice view out the dining room door across my deck. The great thing about a laptop too is that it is portable. I find myself often disconnecting all the cords and sitting on the couch multi-tasking (email, web surfing, and tv watching--oh the gluttony!).

I may be in some luck that the computer will stay in the main house, Michelle actually uses it more than me and is even more addicted to email than I am. As long as I can keep that going I think I will be safe.

Keeping the chill out

I have been meaning to blog this for three weeks, but I have been prevented from doing so by the typical excuses (insert your own here). Michelle and I have been meaning to replace 3 of the 4 older windows still left in our house, but have been putting it off for one reason or another. One reason, was cost. We had Home Depot come in and give us a quote and they basically wanted my first born and a second mortgage on the house in order to install what turned out to be 3 windows and only 5 hours. However, after a storm earlier this month that was accompanied by a lot of wind, I decided I needed to do something so that the shade does flutter in 6" into the house every time the wind blows.

Luckily for me, my friend and co-worker Dan convinced me how easy it is to install windows. The poor guy even offered to help not realizing that I was desperate and would not turn down his offer of help. Upon taking out the first window we discovered that the wood was in pretty bad shape and would need to be replaced. This required a trip to Home Depot to get some wood. Other than that things went fairly smooth. The windows we replaced must have been original to the house (1940), and were the old weight and pulley system. This meant there was a huge (2"x4") pathway for the weights to move up and down. This was only one more reason to replace the windows. So I filled the gap with insulation and after a little over 5 hours we had 3 new windows in place.

Now I can sit back and enjoy the savings. I probably will recover the cost of at least 1 window just this winter in heating oil savings. After 3 weeks I can tell a huge difference in the furnance pattern and how warm the house stays at night. Even Grace who really was attached to her old window thinks the new ones are great.

And the best part is, the three windows were installed for 1/6 the price quoted to me by home depot.

Thanks Handy-man Dan. Now if only he can help me with the hot water heater, the deck, the eaves, the painting, the ...

In the tradition of the Nutcracker...

Grace and I went to our second Nutcracker together tonight. I'm so glad I can carry on this tradition started by my grandmother. The Christmas season for me always feels more like Christmas once I've seen it. I guess this is the first year in about 25 years that my grandma won't be going and taking grand-children.

Since Hattie is much too young to take to the ballet, David stayed home with her and Gracie and I had a mommy/daughter date. Since the little stinker won't ever dress up or do her hair, this was a rare occasion for me to get her all gussied up and looking like the princess she is. (She will do her hair for dance class still though...)



David bought her the most gorgeous princess dress when he was in Salt Lake this fall. We saved it for the Nutcracker. Since the performance we go to is a more low-key and local one, people don't get as dressed up as they do down town in Boston. You see everything from jeans and tennis shoes to very fancy dresses. We definitely err on the side of being very dressy, but it is just too much fun to take a little princess to see the ballet.

We love our little ballet company and it's nice to support something local. They do a great job and again had some pro's come in for the big dances. Grace says her favorite parts this year were "the girl who did a passe while turning", the mice, and the music. She absolutely loves the music and didn't know what to do during the pauses when the music stops.

I think Gracie had a new appreciation for the show this year too since she has started taking dancing lessons. She is excited that she will be having her first dance recital in December. They haven't learned enough in ballet to do a performance yet, but she's going to do a tap number to "Frosty the Snowman." Should be darling!

Happy Turkey!

Well, maybe the turkey wasn't too happy, but we had a good time! Our friends, the Jacksons, graciously invited us to eat with them yesterday. They also invited another family that lives nearby (to them.) It was a cozy little dinner complete with all of the fixin's including some incredible pies made by Preston. David spent 2 days making his favorite stuffing (his mother's recipe) for the meal too. Velvet tried to get in his way by eating half of the bread that he had laid out to dry for two days, but all was fixed in the end and Velvet got a full belly too.

It was also Hattie's first Thanksgiving. Since she's not even choking down rice cereal yet, her choices were limited at the table. She did grab my water glass and have a few sips and also enjoyed a taste of pie and whipped cream.

Our kids had a blast playing together afterwards while we played a game. The Jacksons have kids just about the same age as ours. Jana and I were pregnant together this winter and our babies ended up being about 4 weeks apart. Grace loves their little boys so it's nice when we get together.
We have lots to be thankful for and could make a list that wouldn't fit on a blog, but we are definitely thankful for our darling little girls, each other, our friends, our families, good food, and all of our modern conveniences.

It was comforting to be with friends when we couldn't be with family. We did miss being at our traditional family Thanksgivings and hope that everyone had a good day yesterday. I think that more than the family Thanksgiving day and meal, I missed being with my mom and sisters this morning to go shopping with them! I did go by myself here, but it just wasn't the same. At least I got to go alone and got a lot done without the girls. David was very nice and stayed home with them all afternoon so that I could do my part to keep the economy going by emptying my pockets at the mall on all the "great" deals.

We also decided to wait on the family tradition of putting up the tree the day after Thanksgiving. We have always done this in my family and then since I married David too. After moving to New England, we started getting a real tree. This year, since Thanksgiving was so early, we decided to wait until next week to get our tree so that we don't have to throw it out before Santa even tiptoes on our roof! So, no Christmas decorations for us today...

Play Time!

We have been doing lots of playing this week. Grace had a playdate with her friend Marinda (one of a set of triplets - the others are boys) on Wednesday. They had a blast playing dress-up, playing with trains, riding the spring-horse Peppe, eating Mac'n'Cheese and watching a video (why do they want to watch videos when they have a friend over?) Here is a picture of them eating their Mac'n'cheese as a firefighter and a pirate.
We also finished converting our den/office/guestroom into a play/music/guestroom. We added a hide-a-bed, took out the bed and computer, and added the digital piano. We also were lucky to find a reasonably priced used train table in sparkling condition to polish off the room. (would have been a Christmas present, but we want the trains off the floor NOW!!) The room is the best one in the house - nicely carpeted with built in book cases and entertainment center, with lots of big sunny windows and a great view of the river. I decided it would be the best place for the kids to play and for Harriet to learn how to crawl and scoot around and eventually, to walk (hardwood everywhere else on the main floor.) I am super super excited about it for the kids. David is super super excited to have the trains gone from the living room. Grace and Hattie just like having their own designated "digs."
Now that we have a lap top too, I can just sit on the couch in the playroom and work while they play - very nice! It feels good to get something in order that has been a non-funtioning mess.

On to playing...

Dear Santa...

Hi, it's Grace. I hope I have been good all year, I have tried really hard.
I hope that you can come to my house on Christmas.

I would really like to have:
Oliver
Toad
Duck
a bridge
a good night sleeping place for my trains - "timdun sheds"
(Tidmouth Sheds)
something for my room
a jacket I saw at Maynard outdoor store

I have a new little sister named Harriet, I think she will like:
troublesome trucks

Love,
Grace

I now know how a Utah Democrat feels

Well yesterday was my first chance to vote in Massachusetts for something other than town issues. I was excited to particapate and shift this state a little more to the red. Unfortunately, I need another million people or so like me. The GOP here is weak and can barely put up any type of resistance.

I have never felt that one party rule is good. Coming from Utah, I see many problems that exist there because of the strong control of the GOP. The same exists here in MA, only with the democrats. Last night was frustrating as I really didn't have a choice on my representation. While I was able to cast votes for the candidates I wanted for governor and U.S. Senate, I was denied a choice for US Congress, state senator, and state representative. All democrats running unopposed. How disappointing indeed.

About the only thing worse was the fill-in the bubble voting card I had to use. While the rest of the country was trying out electronic voting, I was stuck in the second grade with my #2 pencil and a bubble sheet. This in the supposedly "high-tech" state I live in. Perhaps in the next century the Commonwealth of Massachusetts with be a state instead of a commonwealth and we will have some better way to vote. Give me the hanging chad any day over the bubble sheet!

The honeymoon is over...

Well it has taken some time to post this, but the honeymoon is over with my new macbook that I bought in July. What started out as an innocent experiment turned into a trip to the Apple Store in Burlington. I guess that I really should blame this on Windows and not my Mac since I was installing boot camp at the time of disaster.

Long story short, I had a blank cdr in the optical drive and rebooted my machine after getting it ready for a windows install. When the computer restarted all I got was the blank grey screen as my computer tried to boot off the cd. Of course I knew all the keyboard shortcuts to get the cd out and nothing worked. I scoured the internet and found a couple of other things and nothing worked. Finally I resorted to calling Apple support. After 20 minutes I got someone who told me to try everything I already had. I knew I was in trouble when he said, "It looks like this is a hardware issue that will have to be resolved by an Apple technician."

Oh great, 5 PM on a Saturday with no hope of help until Monday. All to get a simple cd out of a drive. Being the impatient type, Monday was no good. I called the Apple Store and they had a "Genius" appointment for 9:15 that night. So, later that night, I did the 35 minute drive into Burlington hoping to get it resolved.

Unfortunately, the "Genius" bar was unable to solve the problem that night and it was looking bleak. They were going to have keep the laptop overnight and possible until Monday. All to get a cd out I thought to myself. Crazy!!

Luckily, while at church on Sunday I got the phone call saying everything was taken care of and the laptop was good to go. So of course with my ox in the mire, I made the trip to Burlington (after church was over of course) and got my laptop and headed home.

Luckily I didn't lose any data and I won't be rebooting with cds in the drive anytime soon, but at least it did make me resolved to back up important data which is now done on a nightly basis.

The honeymoon may be over, but I wouldn't trade my mac for any old pc. Down with the evil empire and up with Max OSX!