October in New England

Most people just rave and rave about the leaves. Around here, they call it "foliage." When we left for Salt Lake, the only thing anyone was worried about was that we weren't going to be "back in time for foliage!" I assured our friends and neighbors that we wouldn't miss foliage. Actually, the for the 2 autumns that we've lived here, the foliage has been pretty disappointing. The first one, David's parents flew all the way out here to see the leaves and all they got were not-quite turned trees and horrible rain storms. By the time the rain storms were done with the trees, the foliage was gone. Last fall, things were so dry that the foliage just sort of crinkled and fell off without changing too many colors. This year is by far the most beautiful that we've seen. My neighbor, Jeanne, called me over one day to stand on her porch and look back at my yard to appreciate how pretty it is (was.) That was really nice of her because I had no idea how many colors were in my yard. She told me that she wishes I could have a quaking aspen to remind me of mountain foliage, but, we looked it up on the internet and you have to have 4,000 feet of elevation to grow a quakie. Guess I'll have to stick with my maples. Things were just starting to get really interesting this week when the rain came again. Probably won't be much left of it by the time the storms blow through. Moral of the story - "FOLIAGE" is not all it's cracked up to be sometimes - especially when you have to rake the remains. It is beautiful though and we have thoroughly enjoyed our fall thus far. So far, our classic October activities have been:

*apple picking at the Shelburne Farm Orchards - yep, for you westerners, we go out into the orchards and pick our own apples.*Grace's pre-school pumpkin picking field trip - also go out into the farm field and pick your own pumpkin.

*Grace's pre-school friends costume party (Grace was the ONLY girl at the party not dressed as a princess. I'm proud of my little zebra.)
*the Littleton Ward Trunk-or-Treat
This year, Hattie really got the hang of putting treats into her bucket. She is a total candy-a-holic like her mommy and she was quite excited to have a bucket full. Grace would rather stand in the apple orchard and eat apples.
Check out flickr for all of the fun pics, and Happy Autumn!
Hopefully, pictures of Halloween will follow soon.

Tag, I'm it...

I owe my friend, Kara, a tag. She tagged me a long time ago, and I'm just getting around to it. Sorry about that. Ok, the tag is:

The Rules:

“Each person links to the person who tagged them. Then each person posts the rules before their list, then they list 8 things about themselves. At the end of the post, that person tags and links to 8 other people and then visits those peoples’ sites and comments letting them know that they have been tagged, and to come read the post, so they know what they have to do.”

8 things about me (that you don't already know? -ok, at least something I haven't blogged about before...)

1. I am a fanatic about U2 and in particular Bono. I have been since maybe 8th grade - sometime after Rattle and Hum was released. I remember hearing their music on tape on a boom box as we were rehearsing for a ward road show. I quickly loved Joshua Tree, and shortly thereafter, Achtung Baby changed my life. In high school, I would have given just about anything to have been able to see that show. Good things come to those who wait though - I did get to see them live at Popmart tour (not at their best) and again at the Elevation tour just after 9-11 (definitely at their best). I still get chills when I hear "Where the Streets Have No Name" start up. I also get a rush when I hear Bad, With or Without You, Elevation, and Beautiful Day. I am now a huge Bono "solo" fan. I so much admire him and all the work he is doing in the world to help people and to use his fame and fortune for positive change. Seriously, if you are a U2 or a Bono fan, you should read the book Bono, by Michka Assayas.

2. This goes with #1 - I love music of almost all kinds (everything except the rap/hip-hop thing that happened in the last 10 years). I am a closet 80's hard rock fan. Give me some Van Halen or Bon Jovi and turn me loose in my car. It's embarrassing. Grace won't let me sing. I also desperately miss going out dancing.

3. I really like fashion and I wish I could look more trendy, but I don't like buying fashionable clothes, and I don't like spending time to get ready. Every time I go shopping for clothes or shoes, I gravitate to black t-shirts, basic jeans, and FLAT shoes - usually of the clog type. I was telling David the other day that I went from "Doc's" (high school) to "Birkenstocks" (college) to "Crocs" (mommy shoes.) I think I had some decent shoes when I taught high school, but those years of dressing nice were short lived. I don't know why all my shoes end in "ocs", but they tend to be big and bulky and comfy rather than sleek or stylish, or heaven forbid, pointy. Seriously, I would break my neck in a pair of heels. I have to remind myself of this when I wish that Grace would dress more girly and well, brush her hair. Who does she have to look up to except me?! She needs to pay more attention to my sisters...

4. I am a total nerd. I love science and math. The way that a chemistry problem will work out with a perfect answer at the end gives me goose-bumps. I love lab reports that allow you to write (expect you to write) with passive voice and take yourself completely out of the writing. Here, I'll try it now: A blog is being written. Words are typed into the page. Magically - no one knows WHO is doing it all! Very cool.

5. I really like to read. As a kid, I couldn't read enough books. I could read well before kindergarten. At night, I use to read in bed with a flashlight well after my mom told me to go to bed. I gave up reading for fun sometime in high school when reading became a means to an end of getting a score on an AP test. In college I read nothing except text books. Some English teacher friends of mine got me reading again when I taught high school and now I'm in another book group here in New England. I seriously have no time to read (or blog) for that matter, but the small amount of time I take to read something good is such a great escape. It has to be good though - no time for anything that is really depressing, really sad, or really stupid. It has to be uplifting, really intriguing, and a page turner, or I fall asleep. This explains why sometimes I go to book group having only read half a book.

6. I have a serious addiction to chocolate. Seriously. (It's the only vice I have left - I gave up my Coke (a-cola) addiction a long time ago...)

7. I, like Kara, have ALWAYS had an extra job to make some extra cash. My resume of extra jobs on the side has included:
-veterinary technician
-car detailer
-office cleaning lady
-insurance photographer (took photos of houses for insurance company)
-math and chemistry tutor
-book keeper for a horse farm - this is my current extra job. My main job is of course being a stay-at-home mom.

8. I know some people will judge me for this, but I watch what I call the night time soaps! I DVR Desperate Housewives, Ugly Betty, and Grey's Anatomy. I would watch more shows, but it's all I can do to get caught up with these each week since David doesn't watch them and I have to find time when the kids aren't around AND when David isn't home to watch them. Hey it's better than those freaky reality shows the rest of you watch. Ya - I'm doin' the judging now...

9. You know what, I'm throwing in an extra. After reading this over, I thought of something that people don't really know, but that keeps coming up over and over in my life. Apparently, I am a really good letter writer (I know - you'd never know by reading my blog!) My letters have always gotten results. I wrote letters for the insurance company I worked for that were always complimented and attention given. I wrote letters when I was a high school teacher that always saw results. I write letters and newsletters for the horse barn here and I get lots of results with those too. My latest success was a form-letter e-mail I sent to the Massachusetts State Highway asking for a bridge near our house (currently under construction) to be re-designed so that it was 10 inches higher so that my neighbor could drive his boat underneath. Within 2 days, I got several e-mails back from Mass highway engineers saying that they would most definitely take my suggestion and re-do the bridge design. My neighbors can't get over it. They've been asking for the same thing for 7 years via letter, phone, and fax and have seen no results. Like I said - I seem to have a knack. I was just most happy that I could help my neighbors who have done so much for me. Really, I don't want to brag - I am more surprised than anyone when I get what I ask for from a letter I write. Maybe I need to write a letter to Santa...

Ok - there you go - 8 or 9 things about me in no particular order. None of them extremely important either. I blog about the important things already. I am not really defined by most of this, but it does contribute to who I am.

I tag, let's see...MELISSA. You need to blog sis, so I'm tagging you. I'm tagging my nephew EVAN as well. I keep waiting to see something new on both of your blogs! Also, some newcomers to the blogging family - I tag Molly J, Jen Z, and anyone else who wants to share :-) There, that's at least 8, right? I'm not goin' to your sites - you'll have to read my blog to know you've been tagged!

Seasonal Trip to Utah

We just got back from Salt Lake last night. We stayed for 2 weeks and did all of our favorite things from visiting all the grandmas and grandpas many times, to playing with aunts, seeing a few old friends, going riding, to the zoo, shopping, and hanging out, getting our hair done by Aunt Jess, and our dentistry done with Uncle Randy. Grace and Hattie went to Little Gym with Sean and on an outing with Grandma Barbara and Grandpa Earl to Cabellas to see the animals there. We took the kids to Gardner Village in their Halloween costumes to try to get a cute picture with all the decorations there, but Hattie and Sean just run away from the camera, so we didn't do very well with that. I also went to dinner with all my college friends which is so nice to still be able to do.
This trip, Aunt Lis treated us to a week-end trip to Park City so that we could all be together for a few days and be able to do all the late night and early morning stuff together with the kids. It's hard when the babies go to bed at 8pm, so this way, we were together no matter the nap/sleep schedule. We stayed in this big townhouse right between main street and the Park City ski resort. As we looked through the guest book of the house, we felt pretty cool to see that Tom Hanks had stayed there during the Sundance Film Festival this year. We went on the alpine slides the first night there. I haven't been since I was a teenager. It was Grace's first time on a ski lift I think too. We took Sean which turned out to be a little dangerous because you couldn't strap him in and he tried to squirm out of Melissa's arms. We were so scared he was going to squirm right out of the lift chair, but luckily, he made it to the top WITH both shoes! We had a blast cruising down the mountain. Hattie was pretty mad she couldn't go, but after watching Sean, I am so glad I didn't try to take her. Grace and I spent a long time in the hot tub on the deck Friday night and watched the moon rise over Park City's main street. It was very nice.We did lots of shopping at the Park City outlets too. The weather was nice on Friday to do the slides and to go hot-tubbing at night, but on Saturday, it snowed a lot (I guess it snowed in the Salt Lake valley too.) Seeing snow for the first time of the season was actually kind of fun - even more fun that it melted and warmed up the next day.
Harriet is the opposite of Grace. She warms up to the Grandmas pretty fast, but is scared of the Grandpas. Luckily for my dad and Earl, she liked them a lot before we left. It made me glad that we stayed 2 weeks so that she could get to know everyone really well again. Grace LOVES her grandpas, but tolerates her grandmas. She does love them, but she likes to pretend that they are a bother to her. You know she loves them though, when she talks about them when they aren't around. One thing is for sure, Grandpas give the best horsey rides.
Also, for the first time, Sean decided that he likes us too. Up until now, he has only tolerated us at best. This time around, he had fun playing with the girls and even let me pick him up and smiled and laughed with me. That made me really happy. We don't take offense since he treats everyone but Melissa and Randy and my parents with the same scrutiny.

We were excited that we could be there (almost) for Aunt Christine's birthday. We threw a party for her on Thursday night and had fun giving her presents and getting her a cake. Happy Birthday tomorrow Christine!

The one other thing that took a lot of my time in Salt Lake was shopping for fabric to recover my dining room chairs. We inherited David's parents first dining room set. It is really nice and I like it a lot. It will be in the family for as long as it lasts, so we wanted to do a really nice job of getting the chairs recovered. Our neighbor who built and upholstered our kitchen nook is going to cover them for us, so I just had to find fabric. (easier said than done when shopping with kids which is why I did it in Salt Lake WITHOUT them!) After lots of looking and hemming and hawing, I found some that I think will be really nice and will hopefully last a long time. I am so excited to get this done!
We really stayed too busy to get very homesick, but Harriet did miss things. She kept trying to find daddy everywhere we went - hoping that he would catch up with us somewhere. She would see someone who looked like him and yell "da da! da da!" and then was crushed when they didn't give her the time of day. She also missed her doggies. She tried really hard to make friends with my mom's cats (and my sisters' too) and also with Jessica's new puppy. She was only returned with cat paw swats to the face and jumpy puppy paws to knock her down. She is use to throwing her body on top of Shadow and Velvet and petting them for minutes at a time without them even flinching. She was SO excited to get home to them last night and has spent lots of time giving her attention to them. Both girls were happy to have all of their toys back last night and were excited to go into their rooms that they had almost forgotten about.I will say that the airplane trip home was excruciatingly exhausting. We had a 1.5 hour delay to take off (after we were already in the plane on the runway) and then a 3.5 hour (shortened to 2.5 hour) layover in Minneapolis. By the time we got on the second plane, I didn't think I was going to make it except that we were at least on the vehicle that would physically take us to Boston and then maybe someone could carry us out of the plane to the car! Luckily, Hattie fell asleep on take-off and Grace shortly after, so I got to add an hour or so of sleep to the 45 minutes of sleep I got the night before.

Needless to say - I have done a lot of complaining today about being tired. I will try to stop complaining. I guess it's a small price to pay to travel that far with my kids to keep them close with family.